Pointing the finger first at ourselves

We're living in a world that we've created and we have no one but ourselves to blame. Our politics, economy and environment are all suffering from a lack of collective goodwill. Committed to ourselves instead of others, we've become a mob. The planet's suffering grows increasingly urgent and obvious with every passing day.

We all want the freedom that comes from democracy but no one wants to do the work. Jefferson said eternal vigilance was the price of liberty.

Our nation has always heralded individual rights and we all firmly believe what is right, in our Bill of Rights. Today, those who claim to support the rule of law are referred to as Constitutionalists, who are relegated to representation not in either major party but the Tea Party.

The Establishment should heed the will of the populace, which increasingly goes ignored. I guess if we were a pure democracy, our nation's policies and actions of our government would reflect the popular will. In framing the Constitution, the Founders feared government run solely by popular opinion, as this could easily fall prey to hysteria and hatred.

There are a few persistent violations of our Constitutional rights looming today. Our privacy is routinely violated. Corporations rule. The legal premise that all men are created equal should mean something. Corporations can't be people. Only people can be people.

We're being challenged in a number of ways, with our individual rights and freedoms under attack. We were told in the beginning of the age of Terror that our way of life made us a target, and to this day we're instructed to give up freedoms for security.

A nation of laws abides by the law but recent examples have shown that those with the money make the rules, a belief held by Macchiavelli, a great mind who lived in an age of greed and deceit not too different from today's.

We can blame culture for much of our self-inflicted misery. In our society, the prevailing attitude puts "me" above "we. Cocooned in an tapestry rich with marketing messages, individualism has devolved into unrepentant hyper-consumption.

The Boomer generation's lifestyle obsesses over luxury, and shopping, which brings only transient happiness. Spending makes one feel good but a lack of savings mean few will be prepared for retirement. We all know how easy it is to defer tomorrow's problems until tomorrow. I worry sometimes that the generations that follow the Boomers--a group to which I belong--has been tainted by so much crass consumerism. These days, movements towards self-reliance and re-localization are resurgent though.

Hard economic limits have emerged out of unchecked consumption, when the crash of 2008-9 dried out access to credit. Maybe the change, shock therapy though it may be, isn't such a bad thing after all. Simple as it may sound, we need to not spend to spend.

Yet the financial pain will continue, particularly for the middle classes decimated by falling real estate values, outsourcing, and high unemployment. Dependent on consumption-oriented financing, our economy now flails, drained of its chief source of sustenance, more debt. Our spendthrift, high-borrowing ways are repeated by our government. Like a borrower, our government spends money we don't have.

The burden of repayment--plus interest--falls to future taxpayers. Also, our government's excessive borrowing has led investor funds away from other worthy investments. In economic terms, this is called crowding out, a process whereby investors avoid riskier forms of debt (corporate, municipal) and instead go into bonds issued by our government.

For our government and private individuals, overspending--and its twin, over-borrowing--have forged an unsustainable path. We know things will get worse but how much worse will things have to get before they change? Until we stop the misbehaviors that have led us into the predicament we all share, the problems will only worsen, though their impacts might be delayed.

Another trend we've seen is that of neglect. Too much in our nation has been deferred. We've neglected our responsibility to leave future Americans a country in as good a shape as the nation we inherited.

Any society or person who puts off what can be done in the present is prone to ignore the effects of its procrastination. In our always-on, 24/7/365 world we do have good reasons for neglecting the future in favor of the immediacy of the present. There's so much to do, so much we think we need but really only want.

Environmental health and economic growth

The environment has been neglected, and we've seen this in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the ravaged mountains of Appalachia which have succumbed to mountaintop removal. We've been told by our representatives that regulation is bad, even if the companies they really represent systematically plunder the earth and deplete resources at unsustainable rates.

For a long time, economic growth has been posed as an either/or to economic growth. Judging by the massive BP oil spill, most of the damage is economic in nature. The millions of people whose businesses have suffered are the victims, right alongside the Gulf region and its wildlife. So the price of environmental neglect and pollution is economic more than anything, which makes assumptions about economic growth vs. the environment obsolete.

To keep economic growth, a new paradigm is emerging: sustainable growth. The extractive industries like mining and drilling need to practice sustainability or be force to practice it. Otherwise companies like BP will take unacceptable risks and damage the rights of others to utilize the seas, which are a shared resource, not the exclusive property of any one corporation.

A reckoning might not be that far off. Global warming could shorten vastly the time between what we do to the Earth and the consequences. With the combustion engine spewing out so much CO2, it's only a matter of time before the impact of too much CO2--heating--is felt in the environment.

Another one goes in the Gulf

Recent events are an indication that more environmental destruction is on the way. I just saw today that another well had blown up in the Gulf of Mexico. Reports are sketchy at the present, but I believe we'll see a pattern of regulatory violations--coupled with inadequate enforcement by Fedgov--that preceded that event.

We've all heard that Gulf oil drilling goes deeper and deeper, and all the risks associated with that, but the Norwegians don't seem to lose their deep water wells like we do, at a rate of 2/year or more.

How much of the ecological damage could have been prevented by adequate enforcement? I'm not going to guess. I will tell you that I don't dwell on "could" scenarios. It's pointless speculation. I'd rather dwell in certainties and try to limit timeframes. It is certain global warming is occurring. We see the effects what I call Global Climate Radicalization frequently.

We can hardly decide on what to call it--it being this odd potpourri of droughts, floods, storms, and forest fires. The "climate change" label is more accurate than calling it "warming" as we can anticipate heat but not the effects of heat. You just get a sense that something bad is out there. {For readers of my review of the movie The Road, we get a sense of some troubles out the window, where The Man (played by Mortensen) is illuminated by fires burning outside and shuts the window.

To give a good example, the link between mismanagement of forests and flooding is strongly established. Cut down the trees upstream and, surprise, you get more flooding downstream. Until a big rain comes--an event more likely with climate change--people can ignore the loss of vegetation. It's only when flooding worsens to apocalyptic levels that people can guess the a major compounding contributor: deforestation.

Apparently the horrible situation in Pakistan was made possible not by too much rain (as likely as that is in the New Normal) but by clandestine cutting of forests. If the environmental axiom that fewer tree=more flooding holds, then the failure to protect Pakistan's forests is a big deal. Now, and only now, with so many homeless, can the people and government address the need to protect their forests. This new direction will clearly face reactionary forces which exploit the corruptibility of officials in the Third World.

How soon before they forget? Or, to be blunt, how bad does it have to get before people start taking environmental protection seriously? Well, if the politicians aren't accountable, they might choose to ignore illegal deforestation, which makes future flooding not only worse but entirely preventable.

Another area where decay is evident is our infrastructure. I've seen no mention of bridge repair despite the horrific collapse of a major bridge in Minneapolis three years ago. The problem might not be that things are going wrong, but rather no one seems to be taking responsibility with preventing tragedies. All our politicians want to pose as if they're helping once the disaster strikes, but where is the leadership (and media spotlight) when it comes to the little but vital improvements that need to be continually made?

Our image-conscious politicians don't see much gain in infrastructure. The American people seem unwilling to make repair of our nation's crumbling infrastructure a top priority. Yes, you could blame people in "high places" for not "being the ones who start...to mold a new reality...closer to the heart," to borrow the song by Rush. But ultimately we must take individual responsibility regardless of what we've become as a people. Failing to maintain an infrastructure is a collective failure but it's people, not their leaders, who will bear the consequences.

We all know it's true: pollute one area too much and the land show it, toxins kill off crops, the vitality of the land diminishes and remediation becomes necessary, like all those SuperFund sites littering the U.S.. The timeframe between cause and effect appears to be shortening, courtesy of climate change. Years of pollution and inadequate management of resources makes the time of reckoning that much sooner. It's like the Lakota Sioux medicine man, Floyds Looks For Buffalo, who speak of a revenge by Mother Nature who's been so abused by man (Part 4 on youtube here.)

Like Floyd, I believe I have a responsibility to tell people of a coming event. I guess you could call it the medicine man in me. I think many people like me have been labelled tree-huggers, or conspiracy theorists, in an effort to diminish not our credibility but the validity of the truths we present. It's simply easier for a society that wants convenience to ignore the inconvenient, to marginalize those who would dare tell it it's wrong, or facing doom.

I can tell you for sure that we're facing economic consequences for over-consumption, this is true. I can also tell you that things will get worse, far worse, if we don't change. I guess the effectiveness of my message depends on how badly as a people want to hear what it is I'm saying.

Back by popular demand: the post-apocalypse

Looking at the movies I reviewed last month, it doesn't really matter whether people were warned of a coming apocalypse. No mention is made in the movies Book of Eli and The Road of what caused things to go bad. Once the bombs fall and food runs out, I guess who or what started it really doesn't matter much.

The popularity of movies in this genre today suggests people intuitively assume we're due to receive some really nasty rebuke from God. People may just assume this. Heck, it's nothing new, people have been drawn to tales of earthly destruction since the first storyteller spoke in front of the fire, telling tales of unimaginable horror and mayhem, capturing spellbound his audience and cementing the place of the apocalyptic story in human history forever.

If it's true that we are all linked to one another, it would therefore hold that we share our misery and our pleasure. As much as we'd like to build castles for ourselves, man is a social animal. We really can't excel without other people, and as big of a pain as others may often be, I guess we all need to get along. Mother Nature plays a vital role in linking us not only to each other but to the space we all share. In limiting us to one physical place, we are forced to examine the metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of our existence.

No such evaluation of where we stand as a society can ignore the importance of preserving our common humanity. I guess these apocalyptic movies serve an important purpose to transcend whatever horrors we face, and show how we can emerge from the apocalypse changed but perhaps wiser for it.

In The Book of Eli, they destroy the Bible, blaming it as a source of problems. I don't know if this act of destruction creates a new order, although the villain thinks rediscovering the Bible will. And Eli eventually reaches a place where a restoration of pre-apocalyptic technology and civilization appear inevitable.

In The Road, a new life awaits at the end of the road. We can see what's happened to the earth, cannibalism, etc., and it may frighten us but simultaneously the idea of a new start gives us hope. And hope is the light that can steer us out of the darkness. Unfortunately mankind just seems destined to screw things up, causing the apocalypse. We seem almost destined to self-destruct. But slowly, these stories tell us, we can laugh again, and live once more in a world that gives us a second chance despite our failings.

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